


Inspiration

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Developing Relationship, Fights, Flowers, Living Together, Love at First Sight, M/M, Making Up, Marriage Proposal, Musicians, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-14 20:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3424496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Elliot can remember a time when he still had control of his life." Music student Elliot accidentally runs into his muse in the form of the owner of the flower shop down the street. Everything is straightforward after that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Claws](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claws/gifts).



Elliot can remember a time when he still had control of his life.

It wasn’t even very long ago. Not two weeks back he could make it straight home from his classes, lost to his surroundings for the music ringing in his thoughts and beelining for the piano as soon as he came in the front door. If he didn’t sleep it was the music keeping him awake, the ring of the piano keys under his fingers, everything in his life centering on that one obsession until there was no space for anything else.

It was the fault of that single-minded focus that brought him swinging around a corner faster than he should have taken it, that dreaming inattention to his surroundings that kept him from noticing the dark-coated oncomer until a collision was inevitable. Elliot had slammed in against unexpected resistance, a shoulder digging in against his chest and blowing all the air out of his lungs, and it was while he was still gasping for air that a sharp-edged voice snapped “Watch where you’re  _going_!”

“You ran into  _me_ ,” Elliot started to say, ready to offer defensive protest even in the face of the evidence. Then he had looked up from the hand pressed to the rising bruise over his chest, met the glare the stranger was giving him from under the curtain of his over-long bangs, and all his newly-reclaimed air left his lungs all at once.

“Oh,” he said, sounding soft, shocked out of any aggression he had. “Hello.”

The other boy blinked, drawn back like he was trying to get out of Elliot’s range. He looked up through his hair, still, his chin dipped down to cast his entire face into shadowy suspicion. Elliot could barely see the dark of eyelashes framing the color of his eyes, was sure the shadow was hiding the details of the other’s gaze, and even then they were the most beautiful eyes Elliot had ever seen in his entire life.

“What’s  _wrong_  with you?” the other demanded. Elliot couldn’t look at his mouth, could barely hear the snap of irritation in his throat; his head was spinning, notes scattering from dozens of half-finished pieces to reform into something brighter, warmer, more suited to the piercing beauty in front of him. “Are you going to apologize or just keep blocking my way?”

“Sorry,” Elliot blurted, not sure what he was apologizing for anymore, only that the boy in front of him apparently wanted such. The other’s eyebrows had relaxed, his expression shifting from anger into something closer to disdain, and Elliot offered his hand in some desperate half-thought attempt to reclaim his composure.

“I’m Elliot Nightray.” The other just kept staring at him, hands unmoving from his sides and gaze fixed in judgment at Elliot’s features. The pause went long, drawing awkward in the moment before Elliot took a breath and tried prompting. “You are…?”

“Leo,” the other said, snapping the name out. He looked away from Elliot’s face, shoved past him and his outstretched hand to continue around the corner. Elliot turned, trailed him back out onto the street even though it was in the opposite direction of his apartment.

“That’s a nice name,” he tried, desperate to get something more of a reaction. Leo looked back at him, the light catching his features for a moment and throwing them into artistic relief. Elliot couldn’t breathe right, like Leo’s shoulder had knocked the memory of breathing from him along with his air. “Where are you going?”

“Work,” Leo said. “You apologized already, go away.”

“I’m sorry for running into you,” Elliot babbled. “Let me make it up to you. Please.”

He could hear Leo’s huff of frustration. “You want me to hold your hand and tell you everything’s alright and you’re forgiven?” Leo drew to a stop in front of a shop door, fished a set of keys from his pocket to unlock the door. “Fine, you’re forgiven. Feel better?”

Elliot didn’t. His heart was pounding in his chest, all the music in his head rising to some grand finale. The door to the shop came open, carrying the scent of flowers with it, and inspiration struck.

“Let me buy some flowers.” Leo moved into the shop, didn’t hold the door; Elliot caught it anyway, stepped forward into the perfume-hazed warmth of the shop. “A bouquet. For my apartment.”

Leo stepped around the counter to the back of the shop, dropped his keys onto the counter. “You’re an idiot.” He said it calmly, like he was just stating facts, and then he turned back around to face the door. The plate glass behind them was shining gold with sunlight, the illumination pouring through the space to light all the flowers on fire with color, and it caught Leo’s eyes, too, set off the glow of purple rich enough for a king.

Elliot was lost, then, lost in the ringing crescendo in his head as all his notes fell into place at once. He barely looked at the bouquet Leo pushed across the counter at him, paid no attention at all to the cost. He got home late, that night, set the flowers within sight of the piano and started to play without sheet music, let the aggression of remembered words and the shadowed glow of purple eyes guide his fingers instead.

By now every surface in his house is covered, vases of flowers filling the room until his apartment smells as sweet as Leo’s shop. Elliot barely sleeps at all, now, for framing the play of notes still rushing through his mind with the insistence of his new muse, with dark hair and unbelievable eyes and the sharpest tongue Elliot’s ever heard.

He needs Leo’s song to be perfect, for the day he finally persuades the other boy to come home with him.


	2. Forces

Leo takes pity on Elliot after the third week.

It’s partially curiosity. The other boy has been a regular visitor day after day, inconsistent in what he buys but so punctual with his arrival Leo could set a clock by him. Even if he’s giving most of the flowers away, he can’t possibly have enough recipients for nearly a month’s worth of bouquets, and Leo is interested just in knowing where he’s  _putting_  all the flowers he buys.

The rest of it is personal interest, though Leo has no intention of letting Elliot know that. It’s hard to resist the hazy devotion so unselfconsciously clear in the other’s expression, difficult to fight off some measure of reciprocation just out of gratitude, and it’s not like Elliot isn’t attractive in his own right. It’s his hands that catch and hold Leo’s attention, long fingers agile and elegant even when he’s idly tapping them against the counter or making a fist when Leo can needle him out of infatuation and into an argument. His face isn’t bad either, all gold lashes and hot eyes, open and too honest for the world to be anything but harsh with him.

Leo can understand what it is to be too honest. It makes him smile, first when his back is turned and later to Elliot’s face, offering wordless encouragement only as it becomes true. By the time he capitulates to Elliot’s incessant invitation to dinner, the other’s smile says he knows he will get agreement, his flickering gaze reading response right off Leo’s face without the words to give it form.

Elliot insists on carrying Leo’s bag, takes it from him without saying anything and snaps “I’ve got it,” when Leo tries to take it back. The cut-short interaction sets the mood for the rest of the walk, turns the silence between them heavy and sulking while Leo forms insults in his head about snobby university students who don’t know when their help is unwelcome.

Leo finds the flowers the moment Elliot opens the front door. It’s impossible to miss them; the air is tangled with their perfume and their color is bleeding into every corner of the room. It’s clear from looking that Elliot gave none of them away, or at least so few as to make the lack unidentifiable, and his apartment is nothing like large enough to hold the quantity of blossoms in the enclosed space. A few are in vases, around the overlarge piano in the corner of the room, but most are not, balanced in water glasses and coffee mugs and a few in what look like mismatched champagne flutes.

“Christ,” Leo says, stepping in without waiting for a gesture from Elliot. He reaches out to touch the petals of a blossom, trailing the familiar softness over his fingers. “What are you drinking out of?”

“The faucet,” Elliot says from behind him. “I ran out of vases.”

“I see why.” Leo takes stock of the room again, careful to look past the explosion of flowers all around him. There’s not much furniture, really: a chair shoved back in the corner, a pair of low tables at different points in the room, a rug to keep the floor from looking completely barren. And the piano, of course, oversized and dominating the room, clearly too large for the space and less a centerpiece than an obvious obsession. The bench is tilted out from the last use, the tray for music notably empty, and it’s not a question when Leo says, “You compose.”

Elliot clears his throat from the doorway. When Leo turns back he’s still stalled in the entrance, staring at the other boy like he’s not even seeing the surroundings. “Sometimes,” he admits. “I’ve been working on a new piece the last few weeks.”

Leo doesn’t have to ask the topic. The proof is all around him, written in the flowers in cups on the floor and shining clear in the attention in Elliot’s eyes. He wants to scoff, wants to huff rejection and laugh off the affection all over the other’s face. They hardly know each other, after all, and he’s been barely civil on his good days since he met Elliot.

He neither laughs nor sneers. What he does do is turn around, come back to the doorway where Elliot is still standing, still clinging to Leo’s bag with his fingers twisted tight on the strap. When Leo reaches up to brush his fingers against the other’s flyaway hair Elliot’s eyes flutter, his breath rushing out of him like he’s been hit all over again.

“You really are an idiot,” Leo says, and leans in to press his lips against Elliot’s.

He can feel the huff of shock from the other boy, can hear the thump of his bag falling from fingers gone suddenly careless. For a moment he wants to pull away, wants to voice protest at this abuse of his things, but those pianist’s hands are shoving into his hair, pushing the shadows back from his face and pulling him in closer, and Elliot is kissing him like he’s dying, like Leo’s mouth is water and he’s been lost in a desert. It’s intoxicating, to be kissed like that, it’s the kind of devotion that’s enough to reset all the magnetism in the world, and Leo can all but feel the compass of his life recalibrating as he slides his hands down against Elliot’s neck and draws the other in as close as they can get.

Leo doesn’t know what force brought them together. It doesn’t matter. Now, there’s nothing that will be able to keep them apart.


	3. Tempers

The worst part about living with Leo is the fighting.

Elliot knows he’s not easy to live with. It was a constant complaint of his siblings, until they moved away and he was left alone to impose on his parents; by the time he left for university, it was agreed upon without discussion that he would be living alone to spare the suffering of his hypothetical roommates. He doesn’t think of this, when Leo helps himself to the living space and moves a whole array of dark jeans and worn-thin t-shirts into his closet; he’s adrift, lost to the music that plays in his head all the time now, too dreamy with creativity to bother with the mundane issues of reality.

They have their first fight within the week. That’s when Elliot learns that Leo cares intensely about whose toothbrush is whose, and when Elliot starts practicing in the morning, and how late he decides to take a shower before bed. That’s also when Elliot learns that Leo can scream louder than he can, that their neighbors will tolerate music but are much more touchy about shouting, and that if Leo’s eyes are breathtaking ordinarily they are a force of devastation when he’s mad.

Elliot forgets what they were even fighting about halfway through. There’s no meaning to the shouting, really, just two high-strung tempers snapping each other into a fury, and even in the midst of it he can recognize that this is going to be a regular occurrence, that there is no way they are going to break free of this as long as Leo is Leo and Elliot is Elliot.

He doesn’t care. He feels alive, all his skin prickling hot with the crackle of adrenaline, and with the aggression of the fight burning behind Leo’s eyes Elliot can see flecks of gold in all that purple, the dark glowing like it’s lit from within with the force of Leo’s passion. It’s not until the pounding on the walls starts, the unintelligible irritation of their neighbors coming as audible yells of protest from the other side, that he can drag himself away, can storm off to the bedroom to slam the door and fling himself onto the bed to sulk.

His sulking doesn’t get far. He only manages five minutes or so before adrenaline turns into heat, frustration fading seamlessly into anxiety-laced desire. He can hear the thud of Leo’s footsteps pacing out his frustration in the other room, evidence that he hasn’t left the apartment, but the possibility of him leaving -- the possibility of him leaving and not coming  _back_  -- is enough to dampen all the fire of Elliot’s irritation into the chill of worry.

His stubbornness wins out for several minutes. He sits up on the bed, leans in over his knees, listens to the sound of Leo’s steps going softer and less weighted with fury. It should be a good sign, the calming of the sound, but Elliot’s chest is starting to ache with guilt, the plea for apology he wants to make going heavier on his tongue. What if Leo is deciding to move out? What if Leo is deciding to  _leave_? The possibility seems ridiculous at first -- it was a fight about  _toothbrushes_ , after all -- but the longer Elliot thinks about it the more rational it seems, until he’s convinced himself it’s an inevitability, until panicked need to stop Leo before he goes overwhelms even his stubbornness and brings him to his feet and lunging for the door.

He pulls it open fast, too quickly to take stock of what’s on the other side, half-certain that Leo will be gone already. It takes him a moment to process that there is a person on the other side, another startled heartbeat to identify the form as Leo, eyes wide and hand still extended for the door Elliot pulled out of his grasp, and Elliot can’t take the time to work through the ramifications of Leo’s stance before he speaks.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts, immediately, so caught in his need to apologize that he doesn’t realize for a moment that he had an echo, that Leo’s mouth is forming the exact same shape. They both go silent for a moment, staring at each other, and there’s no fire in Leo’s eyes anymore, just that devastating focused attention on Elliot’s face and a softness at his mouth Elliot’s never seen before.

“I’m sorry,” Elliot says again, carefully so Leo can hear the sincerity in the words. “I’m sorry, I’m an idiot, please don’t leave.”

Leo’s expression is achingly soft, his eyes melting into shadowed color when Elliot starts talking. The softness doesn’t fade, but his forehead creases into confusion, a dark eyebrow goes up as Elliot goes on. When Elliot stops there is a pause, a moment of Leo considering him like he’s some unfathomable puzzle; then he says, “I’m not  _leaving_ ” like it’s a completely ridiculous idea to even consider.

All the tension in Elliot’s shoulders goes slack all at once. “Oh good” and he’s reaching out without thinking, brushing his fingers against the dark weight of Leo’s hair. Leo tips his head to the touch, lets Elliot brush his hair back over his shoulder; the corner of his mouth is starting to tighten into the first suggestion of a smirk.

“You thought I was going to  _leave_?” There’s laughter in his throat, tight at the back of his tongue, and Elliot can’t help but smile, even if it is at his own expense.

“I was worried,” he protests, though the words go weak under Leo’s fingers brushing against his waist, Leo leaning in to sigh against his neck.

“I’m not going to leave just because we had a fight,” Leo says, making the possibility sound completely absurd. There’s a pause, then, “Especially when I should be apologizing to you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Elliot says. When he pulls back to look down Leo is watching him, his mouth curved around a smile while his gaze drops from Elliot’s eyes to his mouth.

“Okay, fight over,” he says, like he’s declaring the end of a sparring match. “Can we start making up now?”

Elliot’s laugh comes so suddenly he startles himself, a burst of sound bubbling up his throat as Leo grins at him. He ducks his head instead of trying to speak, relinquishing control to Leo’s hands reaching up to thread into his hair as Leo’s smile fades into the warmth press of his lips to Elliot’s.

It’s not the last time they fight. But it’s not the last time they make up, either, and Elliot will happily take the one if he can get the other too.


	4. Serious

Leo is in a terrible mood by the time they get home.

He managed to keep his mouth shut through the length of dinner, capitulating with stubborn intensity to Elliot’s plea that he ‘be polite’ to the other boy’s family, maintained his bitter silence through the entire drive home because the last time they got into a fight in the car Elliot nearly crashed them both into the center divider. But the wait just gives him time to seethe, time to frame the entire shape of his fury into bitter words on his tongue, and by the time they pull into the apartment complex Leo’s patience is too frayed to keep him from slamming the car door as he gets out.

“ _Hey_ ,” Elliot snaps, flinging open his own door and scrambling to get it shut and locked while Leo stomps towards the apartment. “Don’t take it out on the car, Leo.”

“Oh?” Leo snaps, rounding to glare at Elliot while his hands form into involuntary fists at his sides. “Don’t take it out on your family, don’t take it out on the car, that just leaves you or the piano, which’ll it be?”

Elliot’s face goes dark, as Leo knew it would at the least suggestion of injury to his beloved instrument, and when he hisses, “Don’t even  _joke_  about that” Leo can taste the fight he wants crackling like electricity in the air between them.

“It’s your fault anyway,” he hisses, crossing his arms as Elliot shoves roughly past him to unlock the front door, pushes inside without holding the door for the other boy. Leo follows in his wake, slamming this door too just to see the way Elliot flinches at the sound. “Why the  _fuck_  did you think me meeting your family was a good idea?”

“You had to someday,” Elliot growls, kicking his shoes off and stepping inside as he shoves his coat off his shoulders. “I thought the crowd at Thanksgiving would help buffer things.”

“You brought me in like I was fucking  _dessert_  for every awful person in your family to pick at.” Leo doesn’t take his shoes off, takes some satisfaction in grinding what dirt is on the soles into the carpet as he steps into the apartment. “Do  _you_  think I’m some sort of pet too?”

“ _Don’t_ ,” and Elliot’s pivoting, his eyes sparking hot and drawing Leo in to stand uncomfortably close, what would be sensual if they weren’t furious but just feels like the threat of blood under the circumstances. “I  _never_  thought that, not even once.”

“Just your family, then,” Leo spits, making the words as vicious as he can manage. “God forbid you be with someone who  _works_  for a living.”

“No one said that!” Elliot barks, his voice cracking higher with defensiveness, and Leo can feel his mouth twisting around a sharp-edged smile, the one that feels like a knife thirsty for hurt and uncaring which of them feels it.

“They didn’t have to, I could see the way they looked at me. I’m not  _blind_.” Leo tosses his hair back, lowers his chin to glare at Elliot. “ _Or_  stupid, in spite of the  _dozens_  of questions about my lack of college plans.”

“I’m  _sorry_ ,” Elliot shouts, and there, that’s the volume Leo wanted, that’s the shadows in him purring satisfaction. “ _Fuck_ , Leo, what do you  _want_ , me to never speak to my family again?”

“I don’t see what value you gain from their company,” Leo sneers. “They’re all so fucking caught up in what they look like they don’t care about you being happy at all.”

“I can’t just  _stop_  being one of them,” Elliot snaps. “That’s not how families work, though I guess you wouldn’t know.”

Leo can see Elliot flinch as he hears what he just said, the aggression a sharp step up from their starting point, but for himself he doesn’t care; he’s surging forward, throwing himself with reckless rage into the gap thus offered.

“Guess not,” he growls. “At least I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not. Do they even know I’m your boyfriend, or are they all expecting you to bring home a nice little wife someday?”

That hits home, draws a crease into Elliot’s forehead and a shake to his lips. “Of  _course_  they know, I told them, I told them from the start, did you think I wouldn’t?”

“Well you are one of them,” Leo throws back at him. “What you say isn’t always what you mean, it’s hard for me to be sure.”

“Do you think I’m not  _serious_  about you?” Elliot’s leaning in, now, his hands at fists at his sides and his shoulders hunching like he’s trying to adopt more size than his frame actually carries. “You think I’d leave you for  _anything_  my family said?”

“I’m your  _toy_ ,” Leo says, not because he believes it but because they’re deep in the argument, now, well past the point of low blows and on into complete untruths. “You’re just playing with me until you get tired of me. Easy enough to buy yourself a new whore if you have  _that_  kind of money.”

“ _Don’t call yourself that_ ,” Elliot gasps, sounding as winded as if Leo had struck him.

“You’re only saying that because you’re interested  _now_ ,” Leo spits, his heart pounding with desperate adrenaline in his chest. “You’ll get bored, your family will get to you, and I’ll go back to my life and you’ll go back to yours and we’ll never--”

“Marry me.”

Leo’s words stall on his tongue. He rocks his weight back, stares at Elliot’s face as he processes the words. “ _Excuse_  me?”

“Marry me.” Elliot steps in, crosses the distance Leo gave up, and his eyes are bright and his mouth is shaking with sincerity. “I’m completely serious about you.”

“You think that proposing is going to convince me?” Leo manages, even though his heart is skittering out of rhythm and his hands are starting to shake out of their fists. “It’s barely been a year, your family will never let you, we fight  _all_  the--”

“Shut  _up_  and  _give me an answer_!” Elliot shouts, his expression collapsing into an agony of panic, and Leo would do anything to take that look out of his eyes.

There’s only one answer he’d give, anyway.

“Of  _course_  I’ll marry you!” he snaps. “What the fuck did you  _think_  I would say, are you an actual idiot?”

It’s like watching the sun come up, to see the tension flicker and fade in Elliot’s eyes. When he blinks the shine in his gaze coalesces into relieved tears, the liquid spilling over his cheeks until he ducks his head to drag his white sleeve across the skin. It makes Leo laugh, the sound damp and choking in his throat, and Elliot reaches out to grab at his coat as they lean in towards each other so they can cut right to the kissing part of apologies.

It’s not their worst fight, nor is it the last, but it’s the only one Leo ever remembers, looking back.


	5. Variation

The apartment always smells like flowers, now.

Within a month of being married Leo insisted on getting a windowbox, so he didn’t have to keep bringing bouquets home from the shop only to have them wilt within a few days. Elliot didn’t protest. He knows he has a tendency to accidentally kill any flower he touches, but he also knows he can’t deny Leo anything the other wants, and since Leo’s finger started carrying the extra weight of a gold band Leo’s known too. Elliot doesn’t mind. They fight less, for one thing, and when they do it usually turns into kissing instead of sulking at the end. Eventually the newlywed bliss will fade, Elliot’s family insists, but it’s been over half a year now and he can’t see any thinning of the fog of happiness that surrounds him as thoroughly as the perfume of Leo’s flowers.

Composing is easier, too. By rights Leo’s presence should be a distraction to Elliot’s focus, but in practice Leo’s window is close enough that he can fuss with the flourishing plants therein and be in Elliot’s periphery while he’s playing, and that’s enough to grant life to the notes in Elliot’s head, to spill music from his thoughts down into the keys under his fingers without any pause along the way.

“It’s not fair,” Elliot says one afternoon, when the sun is streaming through the window and lighting up the colors of Leo’s flowers, filling in the monochrome of the piano that still dominates the corner of the room. They haven’t even made it to the couch; Leo’s lying on the floor in a sunbeam as if he’s some oversized cat, his eyes shut to the glare of the sun off his glasses and his mouth turned up at the corner with unconscious satisfaction, and Elliot is on his stomach, propped up on his elbows so he can stare at Leo’s features. Elliot brushes a lock away from the other’s forehead, tucks the dark hair back behind Leo’s ear as much to let his touch linger as to keep the strand in place. “I don’t see how anyone can possibly deserve to be this happy.”

Leo huffs a sigh, twists his arm to shove his elbow in against Elliot’s ribs. “Don’t be stupid,” he snaps. “Of course you deserve it.”

“Ow,” Elliot says, the sharpest edge of his fire gone calm with the warmth of the sun. “It’s not fair, though. No one else gets to be with you.”

“No one else gets to be with  _you_ , but you don’t hear me complaining about getting lucky.” Leo opens his eyes, squints through the glare up at Elliot. The light brings out the flecks of gold in his irises, turn them endless and all-absorbing as he blinks at the other. “Stop stressing about being  _happy_.”

“But--” Elliot starts, and Leo reaches up for the back of his neck, pulls hard to drag him down to the floor. His mouth crushes against Leo’s shoulder, the impact effectively stalling his continued speech for a minute.

“Maybe you paid for this already,” Leo’s voice says over the top of his head. “In some parallel universe or past life. This is just the reward to balance everything else out.”

“Be  _reasonable_ ,” Elliot says against Leo’s shoulder, but he can’t help smiling, the romance of the idea catching into the shape of music in his head, a single theme played over and over again in an endless array of variants. “I bet we’re together then, too.”

“I thought you wanted to be reasonable,” Leo growls, but his fingers are sliding in through Elliot’s hair, the grace of the contact taking the edge off his words, and Elliot shuts his eyes and lets the pause go still but for the sound of their breathing, Leo’s inhales giving him the metronome for the harmonies inside his head.

Elliot’s certain of it, even if he’s not arguing the point further. No matter where or who he might be, Leo is too much his, and he is too much Leo’s, for them to ever be really apart.


End file.
